Secrecy and Theranos

My knowledge of Theranos and its dramatic fall from grace is limited pretty much to the popular media – a source of which I am typically skeptical. One exception, at least some of the time, is the Wall Street Journal. Today they ran an in depth article on Theranos that focused on secrecy which as you know is one of my hot buttons. The article points to another problem related to secrecy that I overlooked in my posts on Apple. It is internally corrosive. If only a few select people are privy to the secrets, colloboration breaks down and the elite lose the critical feedback so necessary for refining their opinions. If a company with a culture of secrecy starts down the wrong path they are much less likely to self-correct than one in which open discussion is encouraged.